Lucky_Strike

This is the CM forum, we need Khaki, Olive Drab and Field Grey and lots of it please ...

This is the CM forum, we need Khaki, Olive Drab and Field Grey and lots of it please ...

Haha. Not really, I’ve done the brush and crops 1 to 4 doodads, but haven’t done final checks on them yet. As I said, I’m struggling a bit to get the flax crop 5 and 6 doodads looking right - flax is quite difficult to depict well without making it look like a row of toothbrush bristles. I think I have a solution though, so am pressing on with them. Once those are done I just have the marsh doodads to make with some minor revisions to the first release and we’re done. If I do get time at the weekend I may bundle up a few of the newer pieces but I’m loathe to release lots of small packs as I don’t want to get into too many versions floating around confusing folks. Not that much to do and I reckon it’ll be ready before Ire & Rubble 😉

+1 Also the use of black text on a blue ground makes for eye strain headaches. These design choices are very poor. Please, whoever is responsible @Battlefront.com, fix ASAP. Thanks

A little preamble to this taster ... 
I grew up in rural Dorset in the south of England where our countryside is not so different than that of Normandy (though the Cider may be a bit stronger!). So whenever I fire up CMBN and gaze upon the monotonous green of the bocage, I start to dream of my younger days spent amongst the hedgerows of my native land. Those hedgerows, mostly long gone now, were so thick that we could actually burrow our way inside and create 'dens' where no adult, or rival gang, could find us. So, with some time to spare thanks to COVID-19, I got to thinking about the bocage in BN and wondered what could I do to make it into something like I imagined it to be. Well, the answer is not a great deal - the models for the bocage are hard to figure out, and even with new textures, it's not ever going to get close to what it probably should be, alas. But, having tinkered with the bocage for some time, and been inspired by @Falaise's treatment of those oddly uniform brush textures, I had a go at a lot of the other textures - trees, bushes, grass etc.
So, to cut through the waffle, here are a couple of tasters (some caveats first: it's not ready yet, I just couldn't wait to share some goodness, it will be a couple of weeks yet as I'm trying to iron-out some of the strange in-game distortions; I think this 'plays' best at, or near, ground level just because of the way the game handles LOD and stuff, from afar it's not really going to have much of an effect; screen caps are taken whilst running ReShade, hence the colours are much more muted and some effects are, well, effecting the images (at the end is a pic without ReShade for comparison); I design these for my own gaming pleasure so YMMV will apply when released; I have quite a few other tweaked textures that I may release at the same time just to give the complete 'look' - these are mostly not my work but rather tweaks of mods by luminaries such as @EZ, Aris ( @Fuser ), @Flesh, @Vein, @Kieme(ITA) to name but a few; these textures will be high res and if you want to use the ReShade 'look' then you'll need a decent graphics card in a Windows machine, I will release a lower res version. Enough ... some pics:
( You can study high res versions in my DropBox folder here )



More below 🙂

+1 Whoever is responsible for this needs to think again, black text on blue is a poor choice, grey text on blue even worse. There seems to be no way to choose alternative colours. Please fix or revert to old colours ASAP.

Thanks @Vacilllator appreciated!
Just to show that me poor old eyes haven't quite given up (despite finally being allowed to visit the optician and getting some new jam jars 👓 ), here are a couple of screen shots with a few new bits - crop 1 short doodad & brush doodads - all in the rain... Also playing around with a new ReShade preset for rainy days in the bocage. A bit stuck at the moment trying to come up with some convincing flax for crop 5 & 6 doodads, but hopefully I will soon be able to release the full mod set for consumption.

A gloomy, wet day in the Norman countryside

Who drew the short straw ... scouts out in the damp

Very interesting video even for me who lives in the middle of this landscape.
 The modification of the landscape is particularly accelerating in recent years
 Until the 1980s the landscape had changed little. What a battles I have done as a child with my comrades, the clay balls replacing the grenades and the Sten and other Thompson made of wood looked great. The small size of the fields and the labyrinth of sunken lanes were a wonderful playground, but for the war !!
Combat in this environment is close to urban combat but in 2D there is no hight level
Visibility rarely exceeds 30m and with vegetation it is not uncommon to literally step on your opponent to see him.

A nice video describing Bocage types and how many per Kilometre wartime vs peacetime.
 

Pure coincidence that we are working on complimentary mods at the same time and when CMBN is somewhat quiet. Though I think it’s safe to say that NPye has been working on his mods for a lot longer. It’ll be great to see some of his maps and mods in game and, if the BF/Steam thing works out well and they add CMBN to Steam as well, it’ll be fantastic for new players to see what can be done with the game engine. Who knows this may even inspire a whole new generation of mod makers to chip in.
 @Falaise you’ll be pleased to know that I am quite close to finishing my Hedgerow Hell mod. Working on the last of the crops at the moment, hoping to do justice to Le Lin for you. I’ve done wheat, am finishing oats, and collating some good sample images for flax. When these are done I only have the marsh doodads left to make!

😃 It’s why we’re all here mon ami!

Pure coincidence that we are working on complimentary mods at the same time and when CMBN is somewhat quiet. Though I think it’s safe to say that NPye has been working on his mods for a lot longer. It’ll be great to see some of his maps and mods in game and, if the BF/Steam thing works out well and they add CMBN to Steam as well, it’ll be fantastic for new players to see what can be done with the game engine. Who knows this may even inspire a whole new generation of mod makers to chip in.
 @Falaise you’ll be pleased to know that I am quite close to finishing my Hedgerow Hell mod. Working on the last of the crops at the moment, hoping to do justice to Le Lin for you. I’ve done wheat, am finishing oats, and collating some good sample images for flax. When these are done I only have the marsh doodads left to make!

Say whhhaaattt! I was just looking at the Battle entry on Wikipedia, they have an pic of the front cover of issue 1, I was thinking to myself how I used to have that, near mint with the stickers as well, I don’t even want to know what it was worth, I think I gave away my entire collection of practically every issue from the early years ... LAH LAH LAH fingers in ears, I don’t want to know! Is there an emoji for that?
 

It’s great work and will enhance the game no end. I visited that part of Norfolk some years back, I can see the similarity with the Carentan maps you’ve made. Really looking forward to downloading some of these maps.

I’ll send you a link to some more (brush and crops) when I have those finished in the next couple of weeks. These are some of the biggest textures, and hardest to get right.
Great, thanks for sharing these. Really liking those Norman farms and houses. Do you have an idea of when you will be able to share some of your goodies?
Cheers

Interesting, your iMac’s graphics card seems to do a very good job of rendering, seemingly better than that of my more recent (2019) iMac. Reading back through this thread I notice that you were using MacOS 10.6.8, out of interest what OS are you using now.
Also +1 for providing the au naturel screen grabs, it’s good to see how much can still be milked from the old engine ...
 
I think that Mr Pye is using a mix of mods at the moment, I can see stock(ish) trees and bushes with what look a bit like some of Ez’s doodads. Would love to see what he can do with my Hedgerow Hell mods 😉 (sorry for blatant self promo ...)

+1 👍
Are you using ReShade?
How playable is the game with this level of stylisation? I’d love to see a video of some of this in actual gameplay.

Fantastic work Mr Pye. Kudos to you for taking on these, I know how long they must have taken, they are indeed a labour of love.
PM to follow.

+1 👍
Are you using ReShade?
How playable is the game with this level of stylisation? I’d love to see a video of some of this in actual gameplay.

Pretty sure they already are. I updated both my Mac and PC at the weekend, downloaded at the same time.

Pretty sure they already are. I updated both my Mac and PC at the weekend, downloaded at the same time.

9. One Engine - CMx3
game performance improvments, graphics improvements, ray tracing, intermediate distance bitmaps
additional editor features, dynamic operational campaigns
additional gameplay features, coop, LoS tool, visible aircraft

4. Expansion of Combat Mission Games to VE-Day on Both Fronts: 1944-1945
End-of-war module that includes Brits, crossing the Rhine and the Ruhr pocket
A siege of Budapest for Hungarians
Battle for Berlin
(East vs West, 1945, 46)

3. Afrika Korps: 1940-43 
WWII North Africa
Operation Torch, American North Africa Invasion Libya, Egypt, and Tunis 1942-43

2. Barbarossa: 1941-43
WWII Eastern Front
Can Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin data be used as sort of an upgrade?
Invasion of Yugoslavia
Operation Typhoon
Case Blue
Blau to Stalingrad
Warsaw to Moscow
(also Finland)